Jesse at Pandagon has published his long awaited Twenty Most Annoying Conservatives of 2003 list. In a totally unexpected development, Ann Coulter made the list:
Ann Coulter hates you. And she?s proud to admit it. Oh, and she hates Japanese people, who she called ?savage oriental beasts?. And Arabs, who are “smelly”. Coulter?s world isn’t black and white ? it?s white and fuck you.
There’s more — much more.
cnnfn reports:
Initial jobless claims rise to 365,000 in latest week from revised 354,000. Details coming
More — in other news:
The Friday after Thanksgiving — traditionally the start of the holiday shopping season — generated about $7.2 billion in sales, according to ShopperTrak, which measures retail sales. On Saturday, the tally was $5.2 billion.
The combined two-day total was up 5.4 percent over last year.
[snip]
Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest company, said its November sales were strongest in the first half of the month, supporting analysts’ view that Thanksgiving holiday weekend demand was weaker than expected.
The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer said November sales at stores open at least a year — a key retail measure known as same-store sales — rose 3.9 percent, about the middle of its forecast and in line with analysts’ expectations.
Many analysts trimmed their forecasts after Wal-Mart reported a disappointing 6.3 percent increase in sales on the day after Thanksgiving, known as Black Friday because it used to mark the day when retailers turned a profit for the year.
Damn you Neil Cavuto’s friend Tom! 😡
Jo Fish draws our attention to this NYT article:
Iraqi census officials devised a detailed plan to count the country’s entire population next summer and prepare a voter roll that would open the way to national elections in September. But American officials say they rejected the idea, and the Iraqi Governing Council members say they never saw the plan to consider it.
The practicality of national elections is now the subject of intense debate among Iraqi and American officials, who are trying to move forward on a plan to give Iraqis sovereignty next summer. As the American occupation officials rejected the plan to compile a voter roll rapidly, they also argued to the Governing Council that the lack of a voter roll meant national elections were impractical. [Emphasis added]
Mr. Fish refers to the Bush plan as “Select-a-Puppet” which seems like a good way of putting it. Then again, we’d imagine the puppet has already been selected, the only thing left to determine is how to appoint it.
Bill “Shut Up!” O’Reilly displays his keen understanding of the economy in the latest edition of the Talking Points Memo:
The conservative take is a supply side system, whereby consumers spend and jobs are created by the private sector, which profits from the spending, obviously.
Jeebus Bill, what you described is obviously, demand-driven economic growth. You might want to check with an economist or two (say Paul Krugman) before you say anything else. “Supply side economics” argues that:
lower tax rates would improve private sector incentives, leading to higher employment, productivity, and output in the US economy.
Besides, you have to go pretty far left (yes, even lefter than Hillary!) to find a Democrat who doesn’t think the private sector does (and should) drive job creation in the country. (Even Europeans realize this, although that point is likely lost on Bill.)
Bill also asserts:
The left wants an economy run by the government, with money going to every social and medical program imaginable. That’s the liberal vision.
The conservative version, of course, calls for steel tariffs, quotas on Chinese bras, and a Medicare prescription drug benefit.
And that is the most ridiculous item of the day.
Showing once again that honor and dignity live together in harmony like ebony and ivory since the last presidential election, the NYT reports:
The White House on Wednesday changed its account of a
widely reported encounter between Air Force One and a British Airways
jetliner during President Bush’s secret trip to Baghdad last week.Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, told reporters on the
trip that the British Airways pilot had spotted the president’s distinctive
747 in the air and radioed its pilot. But on Wednesday, Scott McClellan,
the White House spokesman, said the conversation was between the British
Airways pilot and the London control tower and had been overheard on Air
Force One.
A British Airways spokesman told The Associated Press that none of its pilots has come forward to acknowledge either making or overhearing the purported conversation.
How long before one of them conservative bloggers dimisses this story by resorting to the old favorite Chewbacca defense?
Thanks to Blair for the NYT and Newsday links.
Update: World O’Crap has the latest, and it involves super powers!
Meanwhile, President Honor & Dignity to the Oval Office “Sure I wanna protect big steel just show me the money” is apparently set to announce his previously implemented policy was stupid after all:
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush likely will lift steep tariffs he imposed on foreign steel 20 months ago …
Bush raised $850,000 for his re-election campaign at the Pittsburgh fund-raiser where one of his hosts was Thomas J. Usher, chief executive of U.S. Steel Corp., the nation’s largest steel producer. Usher met with Bush to urge him to retain the tariffs.
Brink Lindsey, a trade expert at the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank, said the package the administration was assembling to replace the tariffs amounted to little more than a fig leaf for the domestic industry.
“The existence or nonexistence of an import monitoring system is not going to make that much difference,” he said. “And the pledge on more international talks is lip service as well. The talks haven’t gone very far and they are not likely to go very far.” [Emphasis added]
Well, as long as the tarriffs weren’t a politically motivated instance of pandering to key states for the 2004 elections even though said tarriffs were sure to be ruled a violation of WTO rules, we guess it’s cool.
Following up on Atrios’ post here, here we go:
I thought my blog was done,
But that’s not what they say
Do an insult post,
We need it for blog showcase
Cram in the bloggers
It?s time to take a long hard pee
Time to mess up the biz
Like our pal Andy
Read the rest of this entry »
Writing in Forbes magazine, Caspar Weinberger comically asserts:
Power generation reached 4,518 megawatts of electricity in early October, compared with 300 megawatts, prewar.
If you’ve been here before (or over at Unqualified Offerings) you know that electricity production only reached this level for a day in October, and has been on a downhill slope since, with the most recent 7-day average at 3,647 megawatts. The 7-day average has not been over 4,000 since October 15.
But the biggest whopper here is the assertion that pre-war production was 300 megawatts. We don’t know where Weinberger gets his information, but clearly it has to involve some parallel universe. The pre-war level fluctuated from 3,300 to 4,400 (see here, here and this PowerPoint presentation.) 300 watts was the amount of electricity produced at the end of the war, major combat operations, whatever that was when the statue of Saddam fell with the happy crowd of INC flunkies looking on.
Was it a typo, a lie, or just sheer incompetence? To find out, we emailed the following to Caspar:
We were rather stunned by your “You read it here first” column in Forbes. While you argue that the media only reports negative news, we wonder whether this is a justification for you to report outdated good news or outright lies, as you did. You asserted:
“Power generation reached 4,518 megawatts of electricity in early October, compared with 300 megawatts, prewar.”
The first statement was correct, but no longer operative. The second has no basis in reality. As even the simplest search would have found out, although electricity production in Iraq peaked at 4,518 in early October, it has been much lower since, averaging well under 4,000 megawatts since. Furthermore, pre-war electricity production was no less than 3,300. We hope you will correct these errors.
Sincerely,
Sadly, No!
The waiting game begins…
The results are in, and Sadly, No! didn’t even make it to any of the most annoying lists. We promise to try much harder next year.
This post is dedicated to the smart forfour, the official car of Sadly, No!
Last month we wrote about the improving deteriorating situation of electricity production in Iraq (complete with graph posted at uggabugga.)
Three weeks later Jim at Unqualified Offerings takes another look at the numbers, and helpfully updates the CPA graphs included in its Excel files to include the full data:
Were I producing a report for an executive summary, I’d consider the CPA’s version inadequate. The wide picture and lack of early data obscures the story, which is “Power goes up. Power goes back down.”
The whole thing, as they say, should be read.